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Teaching Text: Matthew 4: 1-11

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

Walking the Way of Jesus | Exploring the Practices of Jesus
Resisting Temptation

Formation

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

What is your favorite movie?
Why is it so valuable to you?
What about it, do you want everyone to experience?

The stories we repeat help us know who we are
Certain stories have a disproportionate influence on our lives if we have believed the Gospel and become followers of Jesus.
Jesus is tempted, and He resists.

We live in a world that philosophically muses whether sin is really a thing?
And it often seems intelligent or sophisticated to suggest that sin is just a construct we’ve made up.
But also if most of us are honest we struggle to keep up even our own standards all of the time, let alone Gods.
It’s a deeply human question to ask
- How do I keep from doing something I don’t want to do?
- Why do I break my promises to myself and others about how I’m going to live?
- How come even if I throw out the rule book or change the lines, I still have a sense of dis-ease?

“What I and most other believers understand by the word [SIN]…has got very little to do with yummy transgression. For us, it refers to something much more like the human tendency, the human propensity to f(oul) up. Or let’s add one more word: the human propensity to f(oul) things up, because what we’re talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy.
It’s our active inclinations to break stuff, ‘stuff’ here including moods, promises, relationships we care about, and our own well being and other people’s, as well as material objects whose high gloss positively seems to invite a big fat scratch. Now, I hope we’re on common ground. In the end, almost everyone recognizes this as one of the truths about themselves. You can get a long way through an adult life without having to acknowledge you own personal propensity; maybe even all the way through,
if you’re someone with a very high threshold of obliviousness, or with the kind of disposition that registers sunshine even when a storm is howling all around. But for most of us the point eventually arrives when, at least for an hour or a day or a season, we find we have to take notice of our HPtFtU (as I think I’d better call it)”
– Francis Stufford
Consider the ways that you experience temptation.

How Jesus gets out there to be tempted
How Jesus resists temptation
How can you and I resist temptation?

He is led by the Spirit.

Facing temptation doesn’t mean we are not loved.
It means we live in a broken world and that its a contested space.

Flesh - internal struggle with selfishness and sin, the pull to be our own god, go our own way, our personal contribution to the brokenness of this world
World - the way culture bends away from God, the stories, messages, powers, and norms that enforce a way of life apart from God. These are can get engrained in systems of injustice and oppression. So we have personal and systemic evil
Devil - but we also have real spiritual entities that are the enemy of the ways of God. We will contending with actual temptation, accusation, and deception (just as we see here)

These temptations are all things Jesus needs.
And they are all deeply connected to His vocation and purpose.
- Temptation for His body and appetites (being take care of)
- Temptation around being seen for who He really is - approval, recognition
- Temptation around what He has come to redeem and receive - status, significance, purpose

Jesus is loved and led by the Spirt
Jesus needs the things being offered
So what is the issue? They are being offered in a false way, a short cut, not from the Father way.

“You will be tempted exactly as Jesus was, because Jesus was being tempted exactly as we are. You will be tempted with consumption, security, and status. You will be tempted to provide for yourself, to protect yourself, and to exalt yourself. At the core of these three is a common impulse – to cast off the Fatherhood of God.”
– Russell Moore
Sin is trying to meet the deep needs of our life out of our own resources without God.
This matters because we lose touch with the source of life.
And we lose the sense of relational connection to God. THE LOVE.

How Jesus resists temptation
- First Temptation | Stone to bread
  - Jesus answered with scripture
  - Eve: She saw the fruit was good for food, pleasing the eye, and desirable to make one wise.
    - It was a way to get what you need in your own way.
- Second Temptation | Throw Yourself down (and be caught)
  - Basically go to a very public and prominent place and do an undeniable sign to show people who you really are
  - And this time the devil uses Scripture. So this has to clue us in that not every time we see Scripture used is it being handled rightly or used with God-centered motives.
    - We need discernment from the Spirit and soaking in God’s word. We can ask “What is the Spirit of what is being said using the Word.
  - Jesus answers with scripture
  - Again, the temptation is ‘get something you need in a short cut way’ with you being in control.
- Third Temptation | The glory of the world for worship
  - The question is what will have your deepest allegiance, greatest affection, and devotion?
  - Jesus answers with scripture (aggressively)

From Jesus’ example we can see…
- Temptation will have its limits
- God will send comfort
How can you and I resist temptation?
- Trust God to Know and Meet Our Needs
- Trust God’s Varying Timelines of Satisfaction
- Know the Story
- Replacement Over Only Avoidance
- Two Types of Resistance - In the Moment and Ongoing Formation

PARENTS: